The Army Corps of Engineers announced that releases from Lake Okeechobee would begin Wednesday afternoon into the Caloosahatchee Estuary and St. Lucie Estuary due to rising lake levels.

Colonel Andrew Kelly, commander of the Jacksonville district for the Army Corps of Engineers, said he expects the releases to last approximately a month depending on the amount of rain, heat as well as other weather-related factors.

Kelly said the Army Corps of Engineers has been holding off on releases as long as possible but that heavy rains since August necessitated the release.

“We’ve been very deliberate,” he said.

“For a while, it looked like we were going to get there. At this point, we are where we are.”

The discharges are necessary due to rising water levels at the lake, currently at about 16.25 feet. Kelly said the lake rose by one foot in August, 1.25 feet in September and more than a foot so far in October.

The lake has risen “more quickly than we want,” Kelly said. “There is still a significant storm threat out there.”

Kelly noted that the state’s hurricane season is not yet over.

The releases will be approximately 4,000 cubic feet per second of water to the west of the lake and 1,800 cubic feet per second to the east.

The Army Corps of Engineers had been focusing releases south to the Everglades but Kelly said that area is now too wet to take in all of the lake’s releases.

“We’ve seen pretty high flows from basin runoff,” Kelly said.

Kelly said he expects those fishing off the Caloosahatchee estuary could see impacts to oysters.

Kelly said he is committed to reducing and stopping the flows “as soon as we can.”

There has been concern in the past that releases from Lake Okeechobee during blue-green algae blooms could damage the water in the Gulf of Mexico though Kelly said the “Florida Department of Environmental Protection has done a good job of monitoring blue-green algae blooms” and that “the recent samples were very good.” The increasingly cooler water conditions has made the level of blue-green algae not “abnormally high,” according to Kelly.

“Honestly, it has not been a bad algae year.” He said the conditions are better now than “in the heat of the summer.”